Page 520 - The Warrior Princess

Author Notes:

By the time this goes up, a new character card will be on the Cast page. The comic story neatly mirrors real life for once - someone generously showed my broke self the way to an older character builder, and heck if it doesn't kinda work out theme-wise.

But on top of that, Luna's actual build is mostly lifted from another reader who emailed me a suggested one after I admitted I hadn't built her yet. By that time, I already had the old version and a work-in-progress character for Luna, but then I compared the two and went, "Yeah, that one's better." So the fact that Luna has a character card on the Cast page is mainly thanks to two readers who helped me out during this crazy, crazy month.

We've also got a new episode of Fallout is Dragons on the way. This one's pretty talky, but we're building up to bigger things right now.
Session 29: LibsynYouTube

...Holy crap, I story timed without honestly thinking I'd be the first post. Wow, awesome. I'll start us out with a kind of lame story, but it's 8 A.M. here, I'll go with what I can toss.

The first party that I ever ran with had a composition of Sorcerer, Paladin, Fighter, Fighter, Rogue, Wizard. At the time we were pretty fresh to D&D and didn't realize how important it would be to have divinity on our side, though the Dungeon Master saw fit to caution the duplicate Fighters against their notion of playing the same sort of build of character (they picked very similar feats and all).

He believed that having the Fighter twins joking with one another in-character wasn't as important as keeping damage off our hides and filling out the other side of the spellcasty quota (why he never brought up the same concern with Sorc/Wiz isn't something I'm aware of, or the guy who was already playing a Paladin and thus pretty close). Everyone unanimously declined to conform to typical partybuilding strategems and buckled down for what proved to be the hardest and most rewarding campaign I've ever played through.

That game lasted for almost a decade and by the end of it only the Sorcerer and Paladin were intact out of the original party (though the Wizard survived all the way to the penultimate adventure), but I think going into all of that is a tale for another time.

After the end of my last campaign the group was switching over from 4E to Pathfinder (not a decision I was particularly fond of and about the 4th major change in our group that I was against), our DM told us that we could make any character we wanted as long as everything was from an official source book. My first character I didn't have too much faith in was a Gnome Gunslinger, he was fine with the idea but a couple weeks later he changed his mind and told me I couldn't use it, my second character was an Elf Magus and again I was told it was fine but then told it wouldn't fit with the world he was building as magic was effectively demonized throughout the world so I went away and made another new character, a Tiefling Alchemist, I made a huge backstory for him built off of the info the DM had given and was told it was ok. 2 days later I was told it wouldn't fit since we would be working for the church and they wouldn't allow a Tiefling.

It was at that point that I got so pissed off with the DM (I'd had numerous issues with him and the rest of the group for a few months at that point) and called him out on BS noting that one of the other players had a Shardmind that the DM personally homebrewed in just for him who was a freaking Sorcerer, because you know, there is nothing magical at all about a magically created inhuman construct who uses magic to do damn near everything.

After that I walked away from the group and found out just last week that I got the last laugh as the group basically imploded upon itself without someone there to keep the 3 unstable lunatics in line.

Kind of like many of my adventures, my characters aren't min-max, they're not optimized for perfect team performance, and they can't actively be our lead (insert role here) unless we have no one else to fill it.

My kobold Seb, for instance, might be the class tank (fighter), but he was made for utility, very rounded out on a skill level, but contains the necessary feats and abilities to match the rest of the team in some way.

In a nutshell; the DM, the veteran players, and even some bystanders were a little more then weary of how my character came out. Being a fighter with constitution 13, dexterity 20, and strength 10 probably was the reason for their concern. Personally, so long as I agro, the group should be ok.

I usually make fluff-heavy builds with amusing backgrounds, but the backgrounds try to fit the character into the campaign well enough that I haven't had an issue bringing my idea to the table. Some of my fellow players aren't as lucky~

A PC that was a multiclass Cleric/Rogue/Monk assassin of the Dark Brotherhood. Except we weren't playing in anything with an assassin's guild and the campaign was social heavy.

A PC optimized wizard, with conjuration specialty. Replaced familiar with teleport specialty. Very nice, but we weren't playing D&D

A PC human ranger, master hunter with favored enemies of ogres and goblins. Also a part-time trapsmith... in a Pony campaign.

Dang. Once again I have nothing; I used to make new characters all the time for fun, so I'm used to letting nifty character ideas go unused & nearly always try to get some idea what roles need filling before I settle on a character. It's worked out great for me so far - in order, I've played a party wizard (only noncombat arcanist, with the Fighter half of the gestalt geared for defending adjacent allies), the combat healer (and sole spellcaster), a demonic warlockish brute (closest thing to an arcanist we had), the team sniper (in a party of Guardsmen), and my latest, a half-orc ranger (our only warrior among spellcasters).
All but the first have gone well. I was unused to Vancian magic, & wanted to hoard my spells in case something even more dangerous than the rogue who'd already whittled down half of my absurd hitpoint total showed up in favor of uselessly swinging my beautiful Githyanki silver sword at him, because how could a human be a bigger threat than undead? Bad plan, as it happened.
(Class levels, that's how.)

I used to make new characters all the time for fun, so I'm used to letting nifty character ideas go unused & nearly always try to get some idea what roles need filling before I settle on a character.

Glad I'm in good company then. That's pretty much the same deal here. However, for a Pathfinder game I'm playing on Thursdays, I decided to finally get one of those ideas off the ground with my Void-Touched Sorcerer (Despite my lack of experience with playing anything arcane.) Its going to be great too, I'd focus on being a debuffer and doing all sorts of crowd control and just be all awesome and stuff. Then my party realized that I'm the only full on arcane spellcaster in the group and we badly needed a blaster. Still, fireball is a good crowd control spell, right?

My 5E cleric is like that too. I made a light cleric for my first character and light clerics are basically armored mages as far as their features are concerned. But we apparently needed someone that would heal because our other cleric utterly refused to do so and thus I got stuck with the role. Eventually my cleric became an armored mage that heals and also tanks because he has the highest AC out of everyone in the group. This last session, when we finally got a fighter/sorcerer with the same AC as me (and even could get that higher thanks to spells), I finally had a sigh of relief that I could potentially drop a role...I know better, but I wanted to at least dream that was a possibility for one day.

Good to see I'm not the only one who enjoys the process of character creation. Just going with my list of Pathfinder character concepts (as it is much shorter than my 4E list since I only recently got into it and had to relearn large swaths of the 3.5 base), none of which I've gotten to play.

Second character, LG Human (Chelaxian) daring champion cavalier, order of the star of the church of Iomedae. Because I wanted a "paladin" that focused on dexterity and charisma.

Third: A LG Half-Orc sacred fist warpriest of Ragathiel who takes a single level dip in master of many styles monk for fuse style. Divine monk-like character who goes about smiting evil. Finishes enemies off with a jump kick powered by pummeling charge and janni rush for a pretty good approximation of a rider kick.

Character the fourth: A CN Half-Orc shaman bonded with the mammoth spirit. I wanted to make a melee focused shaman. Still haven't chosen what exactly to focus on in melee so this one's on the back-burner.

Number 5: A N (or CN) Human (Kellid) warrior of some sort from the Realm of the Mammoth Lords. This one is still in concept building.

Lastly: A LN Human (Taldan) swashbuckler from Rostland in the nation currently called Brevoy who aspires to become an Aldori Swordlord because of an encounter he had as a child.

I expressed an interest in being a sorceror, but another player basically said "I wanna be a sorc or I'm not playing" so I had to make a cleric instead.

Also, we decided to play Carrion Crown with a barbarian, a fighter, a wizard and a ranger because all of us really, really liked our characters and nobody was willing to back down and roll up a cleric or a paladin instead. If you don't know it, Carrion Crown is really, really undead heavy.

Yeah, an undead-heavy run with all martials is why I made my Orsimer combat healer.
Of course, they didn't tell me that undead were the reason they needed another divine player besides the stick-up-the-backside paladin, so I made a Favored Soul of Obad-Hai... Burning Hands is almost as good as Turn Undead, ja?

Lucky I actually like doing things the hard way, then; it still got pretty hairy, but I've never liked Turn Undead - a fleeing enemy is just one that's still a problem, in my book.
I guess the whole 'focus on build over fluff' theme does apply to him, actually; the players were just happy to finally have a healbot to patch them up between fights, and didn't care too much about his goal of earning enough recognition to force the human & elven kingdoms to honor their mutual aid treaties with the Orcish holds that guarded the borders of civilized lands, while the GM was baffled by the idea of a spellcaster that used 2 different stats for casting. He wound up changing it so I only used CHA to cast, like a sorcerer or bard, to take the sting out of needing my stats down to pregen spreads to keep things lower power. That kinda bugged me; to keep from gimping my build I had to dump WIS, which kinda messed with my intended treehugging flavor. It worked out, though, with him having turned to religion after getting hopelessly lost in the woods and wandering for months until he dreamed a vision of Obad-Hai and gained his powers - a happy-go-lucky druid who gets lost in the woods but doesn't mind wasn't something I'd ever thought of before then.

It wasn't me, but a friend of mine who was playing in a campaign with me. One of our mutual friends had decided he wanted to DM an online campaign (his first campaign online and his first campaign in general), and he had been discussing the details with me for a few weeks, as I was the primary DM for our group back in the days. Because of this, I had first pick of what to play, and I ended up going for a paladin (originally going to be a cleric, because I love playing clerics, but inspiration struck).

Unfortunately for my other friend, he had the last notice about the campaign, so he had to build around the other party members' choices. His first idea, a dual-wielding fighter, got eliminated because my paladin is a dual-wielder (think Father Anderson from Hellsing Ultimate), and he didn't want to duplicate roles. His second idea, a dwarf warrior who wanted to rebuild the glorious dwarven empire, was shot down due to setting reasons. His third idea, a ninja/sorcerer hybrid, was shot down because another player in the party was playing a ninja. So he finally settled on an alchemist, which seemed ok. That is, until half of the party decided they wanted to switch their character builds last minute, and one was adamant about playing an alchemist.

Keep in mind he wrote lengthy backstories for each of these characters (>2 pages, double-spaced). I felt so bad for him in the end, he finally just kind of said 'screw it' and asked the party members what they wanted him to build. And then those party members dropped from the campaign. :(

I built a pathfinder brawler who's damage output was in the hundreds on average during a charge (at level 10, no less). Unfortunately, we already had a high damage output character, i was worried about outshining them, so i never played him. (There was also the whole "succeed a will save or you start attacking your friends", but still). I instead played a bard, who managed to cause enemies to panic in one round.

Charging for massive damage's something I'm familiar with. I once had to scrap a gestalted Ranger/Cavalier I was making for a friend's game when I ran the numbers on him and realized that in mounted combat, doing a charge with his lance as I'd intended him to do, he pumped out somewhere in the vicinity of...I think it was 400 or 500 or something damage with a nonmagical lance.

The Bard-who-thinks-he's-just-using-a-magic-item, the pawn shop owner/gemcutter/forger/fence/disguise artist (rogue with minimal sneak and no thief skills- I was building him to be able to pass himself off as a wizard or cleric (he had 13 different holy symbols)), the half-orc bard orator/advocate who couldn't cast spells (or sing songs, I forget which), the street-level superhero/PI among the 5 greatest remaining heroes who basically killed one, tricked them, escaped them, trashed their vehicle, AND stopped the baddy by himself, the half-ogre barbarian who can't pronounce his own name, the bare knuckle boxer in a fantasy campaign, the character who can basically only communicate through head nods and body language, etc...

Ouch, Tom, that one made me cringe - what your friend endured sounds like a lot of scenarios that I've gone through as a player myself.

On the bright side, it did remind me of a much better story than the one I originally used for my own prompt!

Three or four years ago, a friend of mine had a strong campaign that he'd put more than a year into constructing ready to roll, and he'd requested that several friends of his participate in the game.

As far as I know, they were members of his typical gaming group, and thus he had little reason to expect anything bad from them. He'd knitted a socially complex world full of subversive tropes that you had to approach openmindedly to get the full picture on - early suppositions would be proven wrong, suspicions torn asunder if they were based on tropes, and similar things thrown on their heads. If anyone reads Darths and Droids, I'd guess a fair comparison would be the comics where one of the players is cheesed off about a scenario where another'd written vampires in her campaign to be sympathetic characters (implied to be a Twilight parody, but I digress...).

Anyway, he gets these guys in, and woe betide me for trying to actually remember what their party composition was, but from what I recall it was...Unusual? I think it was a Spellsword or a Swordsage (one of the two), a Duskblade, a Druid that mostly concentrated on animal companions, and an Evoker.

The party was an oddball one, but it would've functioned well enough if not for the fact that, by my friend's professment, nobody was coordinating. One of the stories he gave me was where they were in aerial combat facing off against a dragon a few CR underneath them that hammered them, not because the encounter was poorly set up or executed, but because nobody was willing to coordinate with anyone else. One of the meleers bumrushed it, someone else was convinced it was unassailable and was saving his own skin, a third was trying to buff before he rushed in, and the rest I can't even recall, but it came just short of a TPK.

On top of this, the group were regularly running roughshod over his campaign world in-character, with half of the party not bothering to make any appreciable attempt at roleplaying and making snap decisions off the seat of their pants that I think included killing a guardsman at one point because they thought they were deceiving people and that was the best way to out it.

Yeah.

So anyway, after the dragon nearly TPKed everyone, the DM let the one or two survivors pick up the pieces, get people rezzed, and then came to me hoping that I'd play Cleric since this whole time they'd been soldiering on with no healing. Despite having rerolled several times, none of them ever rolled a character with supportive abilities, and the Druid - while able to support - was, as mentioned, concerned about companions, and based his spell list mostly around them.

I'd never played a Cleric before, so I was hesitant. Most of my roles were either as the Factotum that did a little bit of everything or the Wizard that kept the party trucking with buffs, though, so I figured I could handle it.

The sessions came and went. I met the party, who were halfway decent, and seemed appreciative enough about the fact that I'd rolled up a Cleric for them. The druid's player was even kindly and I took a shine to him. What got me was that in all of the heavy roleplaying that'd been set up, the biggest thing that was pointed out by them was the building I'd done for the character as opposed to the intricate backstory I'd wanted to weave together for her.

I kept trying to get involved in roleplay with them and got shunted, relegated myself to hitting up NPCs just to figure out more about the world, and by the point we got into our first major battle (which mercifully included an NPC or two that happened to be in attendance), I wound up making plans around everyone else because they flat-out ignored an attempt at a pre-battle plan beyond "Get guy in this place, hit him with stuff." My memories of that fight're mostly putting summoned critters in places where I knew the party'd go to fill up those spaces so they'd have to -not- be in an easily AoE-spammable location against an enemy using nothing but and supporting one of the NPCs present after identifying her as the most competently built thing on the field that wasn't trying to repeatedly use things that were proven not to work.

You know it's bad when you're down to working with NPCs instead of the party. After the fight I tried to have a talk with them about strategy and the fact that our last few attempts at fights really weren't going well just because there wasn't much thought being paid to the team. I got shut down with mentions that it was MY job to care about the team.

You know, because I'm the Cleric. I'm the guy that cares about the team. That's my party role.

I officially stopped giving a bludger and ceased to play after that because I felt frustrated at trying to figure out what was a GOOD world being wrecked by the players who didn't even know how to play the game OR want to RP and STILL felt the need to judge other people by how well they did at it. As a happy ending note to this story, that campaign was later abandoned after the DM felt like it'd been run too far into the ground, and I asked him to give me another shot at it now that it was just the two of us.

So far, I've been one Cleric soloing content meant for a full party 4-5 levels higher than me and I only just picked up a Paladin/Bard combo of allies after several weeks of play going into the endgame he had ready. Despite having been pretty much alone for most of the story, it got pulled off because I gave encounters a little thought before rushing headlong into them and watched my step even when the foe looked perilously tough or ridiculously easy. It's paid off every time, and despite filling every party role myself, there's one major defeat out of I dunno how many fights.

My damn job to care about the team indeed. I -am- the damn team.

Wow, this was long, but I dunno where to even start trimming. Sorry, I hope it's readable.

I feel your pain Pode my group is exactly like that. Our cleric often forgoes healing so she can try and hit stuff. And last session she blew a massive party targetted heal on one person just because she just got the spell. We all really regretted that a few rounds later. I've also been chewed out for not being on the front lines in the melee to soak up damage and support said cleric........I'm a bow centered rogue.

I once played a rogue-centered cleric. I was still expected to heal the party, but I kept track of a "Health Fund" that I expected the party to all chip into. The fund is what I used to cover magic healing items I'd use on the party. Cause Restorations aren't cheap. :3

I tended to give healing/buff preference to the party members who donated well toward that fund. Which in hindsight worked out because that meant the team players survived more often than the lone wolves.

Blegh, I've hit those situations multiple times over the years. (It strikes me as odd, kind of, that I can use the phrase "over the years" and mean it.) My players almost always have had a tendency in the past to not coordinate their character creating efforts, leading to multiple missing components. That said, I enjoy challenges like that. Actually, one of my favorite campaign ideas, that sadly didn't progress past the first session, was an evil, monstrous group. We had a very young red dragon, and his trickster satyr cohort, who lived together in the forest, the satyr entertaining the dragon, and the dragon protecting the satyr. Said dragon had an arrangement with the nearby Yuan-Ti civilization, where was to be found the other two players, a Yuan-Ti cleric, rising through the ranks of his organization, and an enslaved ghoul assassin, bound by a magical collar that forced him to obey the commands of whomever holds his control rod.

Of course, his departure from campaign would've been very loud, and very angry, probably.

Still, props to the solo-cleric. Gotta respect someone able to make a one-character campaign work, on either side of the screen. Of course, when it comes to solo careers, it's hard to outdo a Cleric, since they can ably fill the roles of healer, single-target damage dealer and tank, with just the standard kit of class features and spells.

I just looked at the cast sheet for Luna, and I can't help but say that she, despite being level 7, is over-powered. Many would probably think not (to a combat/social standard, in fact she fits in quite well), but to a utility standard, she is quite broken.

Evidence: Cutie mark, the Moon (Control of moon, and arcane domains of night, which includes dreams). Start hiring people to cast sleep, or wait for your quarry to fall asleep, then you can start messing with them. Plus if you ever felt like kamikaze-destruction (not likely to be survivable), just bring the moon down on everyone.

Although, being a good character, then none of those options could really fit in, so yay?

I'm unfamiliar with 4E, so I can't really judge her power level. That said, I do like how she has an ability called "Reorient the Axis." In Luna's case, I imagine that involves minor tweaks to the moon's orbit and rotation that somehow result in battlefield buffs, because reasons.

Hey FOME! To answer your question, Reorient the Axis is designed to move your party around, letting you set up future turns, rescue allies from danger, and reset things to more optimal positioning...if I recall correctly. I don't have my 4E books right now.

This suggests at least one reason why Equestria doesn't have many foreign policy problems. Anyone who rules a nation is famous enough that Princess Luna will know of them. And everyone has to sleep sometime...

What are the odds that Luna peeks in on famous generals now and then to see what they're up to?

Probably explains why they've had peace for so long. Heck, everyone must of had a heart attack when Luna turned into Nightmare Moon and did everything they could to appease Celestia just to make sure the same thing didn't happen to her. All of the sudden, the paranoia of the Zebras in Fallout: Equestria becomes more and more understandable as ideas like Wvyern's and Specter's keep getting brought up...

I think everyone is glad that ponies are inherently peaceful creatures or they would be so screwed.

Well, my group's just started a forum RP, and everyone seems aware that our party isn't exactly optimal (especially given the amount of combat we had in our last RP). Here's a rundown:

An archer with enchanted arrows but little melee ability.

A pyromancer/geomancer that looks set to be a glass cannon.

A tanky fighter.

A technomancer with some melee ability.

A runesmith/healer that seems to be the epitomy of the squishy wizard.

And lastly, my character. An illusionist with zero combat ability, and magical tattoos that give a constant effect of making people fall in love with her (so she really attracts attention).

Bearing in mind that in our last RP in the same setting, we went up against a Daemon Lord, an Infernal Dragon, and some hellbears (and possibly some other stuff I've forgotten) in one encounter, our party looks woefully unprepared. No-one cares though, but I do expect someone to die fairly quickly. Last time I died in the second fight, and death is pretty permanent in this setting.

I played in a 4e game as a Dragonborn warlord, and wanted to be a noble-type character so I asked the other PCs to swear fealty to me. They didn't like that idea, and in the first fight I accidentally too much damage to the face.

My next character fit in much better. Ironic, because I decided on playing something quite alien. It was a shardmind bard, and I described it as a Medium-sized chunk of crystal with extremely limited telekinesis instead of arms and legs. I levitated an inch off the ground, and could telekinetically wield a sword and shield. Instead of hide armor, I had hides and furs draped over me. My bard abilities were caused by me vibrating to make sound, and repeating sounds I heard earlier.

If you're in need of an up-to-date character builder, might I suggest looking into CBLoader? It's a program that allows for homebrew modifications to the 4e character builder, including, most notably, adding in all the official content that never got ported into the builder. Been using it for a while, it's pretty awesome. And no more pointless subscriptions required!

Ah yes... Learning how to PROJECT your voice is an interesting skill to pick up. It's not shouting - you can project at normal conversational levels - but rather a way of speaking clearly and emphatically so that the folks in the cheap seats in the back of the theater can hear you.

Hey guys. I thinking about starting a Pathfinder play by post campaign, allowing (but not requiring) pony races. For pony stats, I am using this document with one minor change, and that is that ponies count as fey for things concerning creature types.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1P85I147ZjSZBJ8C-w9ZCDwJ6V3poJs5LtQSFiO-v2c8/mobilebasic?pli=1

I am interested in making a semi-serious campaign in a home brew setting. By semi-serious I mean that while the overall stakes and plot is going to wind up bring huge (save the world big at least), there will be plenty of moments of levity. Also, I tend to weave character backgrounds and motivations tightly into the overarching plot. I am looking for at least three players, and as many as six.

If anyone is interested, please comment here, along with if you would prefer Mythweavers or RPG.Net as the hosting site for the game.

Intriguing, but I have zero experience with play-by-post, and given that I'm currently involved in a few games, not to mention studies, jobhunting, and applying for transfer to another college, I'm disinclined to start now, even for you guys. I'd love to read recaps if you get it off the ground, though.

I've been meaning to get into some sort of 'tabletop' RPing for a while now (all thanks to Darhts and Droids and this very comic, in fact!), so, although I have zero experience at this, would you mind letting me join if I went and did as much research as possible into Pathfinder?

I'd prefer Mythweavers as hosting site, if that's alright, looks the better of the two for my liking.

Okay guys, I have the basic game set up at http://www.myth-weavers.com/game.php?g=21582 including an OOC chat and a character drafting thread. Just ask me to join the game there and I'll register you as players.

Splendid, now I just need to figure out which of my pony characters would fit in. I've got Evil Eye the hate-fueled Lunar Pony guard (Barbarian), Wormwood the meek Earth Pony shaman (Druid), and my personal favorite, Wandering Eye the Unicorn scholar of all things Lovecraftian (Hmm... in 3.5 would have been an Archivist, so maybe a Wizard? Although in Pathfinder there is a Bard archetype called Archivist so... hmm).